CityU Veterinary Health Group consists of 2 business enterprises, CityU Veterinary Medical Centre (CityU VMC) and CityU Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (CityU VDL). CityU VMC is the largest veterinary hospital in Hong Kong and one of the largest in SouthEast Asia, located in a state-of-the-art facility spanning over 33,000 sq ft. This modern set up allows the delivery of exceptional veterinary clinical services in primary care, 24 hour emergency, as well as specialist care in multi disciplines. We also run Vet Boutique, an online retail store e-commerce platform, catering for the growing digital pet consumer.As a designated teaching facility for the Bachelor of Veterinary Science degree of the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Club Medicine and Life Sciences, we host numerous vet students through clinical rotations and have a strong commitment to education and empowering the future veterinarians in Hong Kong.As Executive Director of both CityU VMC and VDL, I am extremely proud to lead our team of over 260 staff who are committed to advancing veterinary education, innovation and care.

VetPartners has 13 Specialty and Emergency Hospitals, which comprises up to a quarter of the Spec/ER footprint in Australia. It is a business critical portfolio that includes the 6 largest veterinary hospitals of our broader VetPartners network. The Executive Director of Spec/ER sits on the ELT, reports to the CEO and manages the full day-to-day operations of all the hospitals of this portfolio. I was offered to take up this position as a secondment from my GM Vet Ops role, beginning at the end of February.

Duties and responsibility: As the highest ranked veterinarian in the operations team I have accountability and responsibility for enhancing and progressing the clinical standards of care for the whole VetPartners group, as well as leading business critical projects that drive revenue growth and productivity/efficiency enhancement. As well as projects, I have a dotted line management of 9 state based veterinary operations managers, who I work closely with to enhance our clinical standards as well as govern the safety and compliance around clinical safety as well as restricted drug management and use.

As the Head of Product and Service Innovation at VetPartners ANZ, I have a critical role in delivering on VetPartners’ growth strategy and turning it into action and delivering results. I am responsible for identifying market opportunities and insights, and translating findings into new product/service development platforms and viable commercial propositions. I use my clinical insights to translate business strategy into the development of new products and services that drive and support the overall business objectives. A key part of the role is to lead the product and service innovation team to actively contribute to strategy planning, concept definition, implementation, launch and ongoing performance of our products and services. I also hold the responsibility of leading and managing our Best for Pets wellness program and platform, which is the largest single service offering across our network of practices. In addition, I will be called upon to provide feedback and input into other projects, campaigns and initiatives run and managed by the broader Marketing, Customer and Transformation team of VetPartners.

My role involved leading teams through business project oversight, as well as management of several pilot projects and innovations across the business. I used my veterinary insights as well as business understanding to drive the strategic transformation efforts of our company. Using real-world experiences, I led the drive to validate project strategy and direction, circumvent uncertainty and achieve high speed project mobilisation and execution.I worked to deliver business value by ensuring transformation projects are aligned with the marketplace and bring practical, real world 'know how' to realise key strategic outcomes for specified projects.

The Australian Small Animal Veterinarians Group is the Special Interest Group of the AVA for companion animal veterinarians, and has over 1,300 members. We work to provide leadership, direction and community in promoting the advancement of small animal veterinary practice. As President, I oversee the management of our 10 member executive committee, and assist with managing major projects and initiatives, including the chairing of meetings, strategic planning days, as well as the organisation of our annnual ASAV conference and the small animal stream of the AVA national conference. We also lead advocacy matters that are relevant to our membership, and work to continue to provide top quality continuing education to all companion animal veterinarians.

The Australian Small Animal Veterinarians Group Accredited Veterinary Hospital Scheme recognises companion animal practices that achieve the highest levels of quality healthcare and practice management in innovative, state-of-the-art hospital facilities. Australian Small Animal Veterinarians Group accredited hospitals set a benchmark to inspire other small animal practitioners when assessing their own facilities and standards.As the chair of the scheme, I co-ordinated the management and the governance of the scheme, ensuring that the standards of the scheme are upheld, inspections are allocated and conducted in a professional and timely manner. I was able to steer the scheme through the COVID pandemic, which was particularly challenging due to the fact that the accredited hospitals are located all over Australia, and needed improvisation and swift action (maximising action and movement while borders temporarily opened) to co-ordinate inspections.I am proud of the fact that despite the disruptions of border closures, and decreased availability of inspectors, we delivered a successful outcome of completing all but one of the hospital accreditations in time. At the end of my tenure as Chair, there was a record number (59) of accredited veterinary hospitals of the scheme.

The Sylvania Veterinary Hospital Group underwent further growth and expansion and rebranded as Vet Ventures, to incorporate the multi site nature of the business. As managing director I continued to oversee the overall ownership and management responsibility of the business as well as manage the high standards of veterinary care across our sites. Over this period we more than doubled our size, and grew to a group of 8 practices, and over 110 staff.

After taking up the role of practice ownership in 2007, I began the journey of business leadership and management, initially in partnership, and then later (from 2012) as sole managing director. We worked to drive growth through practice of great medicine and surgery, and then expanded our team to support the upward trajectory. This then led to strategic acquisitions of Allison Crescent Veterinary Hospital in 2010 and then Thornleigh Veterinary Hospital in 2014. And then in 2016, we expanded to the other side of the country and acquired the Kwinana Veterinary Hospital in Perth.